Tonight, Stockton will publicly commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington.• What: "Moving Forward by Looking Back," a celebration of the 50th anniver...

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Community celebration

Tonight, Stockton will publicly commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington.

• What: "Moving Forward by Looking Back," a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Emphasis: jobs and freedom.

• Where: Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza, 555 N. El Dorado St.

• When: 6 p.m.

» Social News

The nation's laws have changed, but how do you legislate the heart?

In Stockton, those who walk in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. struggle still with that age-old question. Fifty years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, the city's black religious leaders recognize - and lament - King's unrealized spiritual call for equality.

"If believers don't believe that God's spirit within us is greater than our culture, then we will never change," said Ernie Jordan, pastor of Rock of Hope City Church on South Oro Avenue.

"With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together ..."

Jordan has worked hard in his southeast Stockton neighborhood to build a multicultural church, trying to reverse the continuing cliché that the nation's most segregated hour each week takes place during Sunday worship.

"Hopefully, the community of faith will change," Jordan said. "If not, nothing is going to change."

La Nita Green, co-pastor with her husband, Eddie, of Stockton's Keys to Life Christian Fellowship, sees irony in the way legal protections, but not necessarily personal viewpoints, have changed since the 1960s.

"We don't have to sit in the back of the bus anymore," she said. "That's true, but that's only law. That's not everybody's heart - that's what needs to change in America for us all to be free."

Black or white, young or old, a person of faith or one who relies on humanity's evolution, how you view race and race relations depends on your life experiences.

For most older black Americans, a defining life experience took place on another Wednesday 50 years ago - Aug. 28, 1963. When King left his script and used a single word - "dream" - in poetic intervals, he lifted his speech into immortality and lifted the hearts and hopes of millions.

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The past five years have produced confusing, conflicting emotions in the nation.

In 2008, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, an unimaginable achievement a generation ago. Early last year, Trayvon Martin, a black high school student, was shot fatally in Florida. His death, and the acquittal last month of the man who killed him, have renewed the national debate on racial profiling.

Some older black residents, many of them having moved to Stockton from the American South, carry traumatic childhood memories. The Martin case reminds them of:

» Lynchings and beatings.

» Humiliating, unequal access to American life.

» Unfair treatment by whites.

» The hopelessness and fear of injustice handed down by those in authority.

Still others, like former Stockton City Councilman Ralph Lee White, see the fight for civil rights as ongoing. While believing in King's message of nonviolence, White said he is ready once again to take to the streets.

Fifty years ago, White was in Washington, D.C., and was forever changed by what he heard.

"I was a little more militant before that," White said. "I was ignited by what I heard and wanted to push harder. But after Martin's speech, I was a little more peaceable. He changed my way of thinking."

White was 20 at the time. When he returned to Stockton, he was determined to work for racial equality and helped organize boycotts against businesses with unfair labor practices. In 1971, he was elected to the City Council and pushed for more diversity in local government.

White is 70 now, and hardly less strident. He acknowledges that much of the progress sought by King has come to pass.

"But much of it has been lost," he said. "This is ridiculous. We're probably going to have to go back to the streets and pick up what Martin Luther King Jr. started.

"We cannot wait around for another speech. It's a little too late for that."

"We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence."

Willie Gene Easter, born in 1945 and a teenager at the time of King's speech, draws a direct line from the slain civil rights leader to his father and to himself.

"My dad was a Pentecostal preacher in Stockton," Easter said. "I think Martin Luther King (Jr.) was a great man and had a dream that came true. He believed in freedom, justice and equality. So did my dad (Willie Lee Easter, who died in 1997).

"And I believe in those same principles."

Easter, 68, plays pool most mornings at the Oak Park Senior Center. By 9 a.m., he scoots off to work at a barber shop just south of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

His fellow pool players, a diverse group, keep shooting 8-ball throughout the day.

Easter has known Glenn Lapitan, 67, since their days at Edison High School.

"Yeah, things are worse," Lapitan said. "It's not any better today than it was. This president hasn't fixed anything. If you go to an international fair, every ethnic group sticks together."

Another pool regular is 72-year-old Peter Schlatter.

"We've always had a salt-and-pepper society," he said. "King's speech was one of the best ever given. He tapped into the human frailties - the marches, the Vietnam War. There were a lot of pent-up emotions."

Previous generations, Schlatter said, still carry old prejudices with them. "They don't want to let it go. They don't change. They use the same old excuses."

"One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

A circle of friends rearranges the dominoes inside the Taft Community Center every day. Sometimes a half dozen men show up to play, sometimes a dozen. They occupy a half-hidden back room.

Taft is operated by San Joaquin County government and is in an unincorporated pocket of south Stockton on Downing Avenue.

This month, Lee Vurn Jones, a 71-year-old regular, walked in late one morning and proudly showed off his 50-year membership certificate in the Operative Plasterers' & Cement Masons' International Association of the United States & Canada. He received a gold watch from the union.

"I had my apprenticeship in Stockton," Jones said as he sat down at the dominoes table. "I would go on jobs and build houses that I couldn't buy. No one talked openly, but I couldn't buy in Lincoln Village West.

"There were laws on the books against that, but no one enforced the laws."

Jones, a 1960 Franklin High School graduate, lives on Airport Way. He raised six children; four of them are college graduates. His life motto: Obey all laws.

"That means all of white man's laws," he said. "There is no justice in the law for minorities."

Jim Jones, no relation to Lee Vurn Jones, can be found most days at a seat opposite the long-time union man. Many of their friends left when the conversation centered on King's speech and its relevance today.

"They get angry when they think about what they endured," Jim Jones said.

He is 76, lives nearby and is retired after a career in management at five General Motors plants.

"King's speech was special," he said. "We didn't know what he was trying to instill. But nothing has changed, period. I really learned from situations I was forced into.

"It started in grade school when white kids were told not to play with black kids because they're monkeys."

Steve Kohn, 59, is newer to Stockton - and the domino table. "There never will be a United States of America as long as we have states' rights," Kohn said. "This country is for the rich."

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.' "

Glenn R. Shields, pastor of Progressive Community Church, joins Jordan in seeking spiritual answers to the persistent problems of prejudice.

"I think America has to see it as America's problem - not just a black or white problem," Shields said. "At the root is the selfishness of man. What I really admire about King is, in the midst of a hostile world and society, he never allowed racism to make him bitter. His speech is evidence of that."

Jennet Stebbins, a 69-year-old San Joaquin Delta College trustee, worries that the "Dream" message of nonviolence and stubborn insistence on equality is lost on the latest generation.

"It was a great speech," she said. "We still celebrate it, but it's a lot different today. Too many youngsters aren't motivated and not concerned."

"This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."

In Stockton, there is hope in an emerging generation of black leadership.

Charles A. Johnson, 34, is involved in organizing Black Family Day. He also is a youth adviser with the NAACP.

Michael Tubbs was elected last year to the City Council. He's 23.

And Jerron Jordan, pastor Ernie Jordan's son, is a charismatic, outspoken 28-year-old who has spent eight years in state prison and is now asking tough questions of others.

"I was too black for some and too white for others," he said last week at a downtown prayer rally commemorating the '63 March on Washington. "In prison, I answered the call from my ancestors. Three words changed my life: Who are you? I only knew who I wanted to become."

Jordan used the rally to ask that question of Stockton: "Who are we? As a nation? As a community? As a people?"